After weeks of holding onto the hope to host Tour de France as planned despite the Coronavirus pandemic, the world’s most popular cycling events also joins the list of sports events being called off this year.
As reported earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron, has announced that lockdowns will likely extend. This, in turn, rules out the possibility of hosting the tour as planned earlier, which was supposed to begin in Nice on June 27. While the President banned large public gatherings in the country till July 11, the Tour de France organisers were not in the favour of staging the tour without any crowd lining the route.
France went into lockdown on March 17, with people allowed to venture out only for essential reasons, such as shopping, with everyone required to have signed, dated, and get on with signed attestation every time they leave the house. And though France is one of Europe’s most powerful countries and boasts of a world-renowned health care system in place, the country is currently struggling with a high number of confirmed Coronavirus cases.
Further, the Tour de France is touted to be the cycling’s biggest competition, which sees 22 teams participating, representing 14 countries, apart from millions of spectators that line up the tour route to cheer the cyclists.
As of now, the organisers are working on to settle a date. As per the latest reports, Tour de France is likely to get pushed to August. The cycling race, if scheduled, will continue for around 23 days and will cover more than 2100 miles from Nice to France.
Reportedly, Tour de France has never been cancelled since 1946, when France was recovering from World War II.